What is it that you were given?

What is it that you were given?
I mean from the loss,
After, what was taken.
That very thing you could never live without.
The person or place,
the secret, or circumstance -
now that it is gone,
or has been found out,
and you can no longer call it foundation,
what is it that you were given?

You know and I know, this:
there is a hollowing out.

Something comes and opens you up
right
down
the
middle
and from that moment on
you are no longer immune to this world.

You wake, you wander,
every familiar, now a foreign.
You walk as through water
until you make it back to your bed
and finally, even there -
your sheets, your own pillow's scent different,
as if daily someone repaints your room, displaces something,
disturbs a cherished memento.

You see,
sometimes we are emptied.
We are emptied because
Life wants us to know
so much more Light.

- Em Claire, 2006